How to Stop Time

Matt is thrilled at the prospect of the Sherlock star taking on the lead role. He tells me he imagined Benedict as Tom while he was working on the novel. “I had him in my mind while I was writing it. I think very few actors would be able to play a man who looks 40 but has 400 years of baggage to him. There is always a mystery to Benedict; you can’t quite solve him, and that is part of his appeal.”

Matt, who has moved to Brighton with his young family after living for seven happy years in York, says it was such a boost to his confidence when the book was optioned. “It was two weeks after I’d written the second draft that I learned that Benedict Cumberbatch was to buy the film rights and wanted to be Tom Hazard. When I was writing the third and fourth draft, I was thinking of him, and it helped the book. It can get very neurotic when editing a book, so that early endorsement was great.”